A Coffin for Charley. Gwendoline Butler

too much.’ But he was worried himself.

      ‘But don’t you see, he’s coming closer. Closer. He knows my face and I don’t know his.’

      ‘Come to bed. It’ll seem better in the morning.’

      Stella smiled. ‘The nice thing about being married is that there is the morning as well as the night.’

      Coffin traced his finger delicately down her profile. ‘You have a very charming nose, did you know it?’

      Without warning he remembered the face of Marianna Manners, seen in the police morgue that morning. She too had a nice nose but one now suffused with dark colour.

      An actress, like his Stella, but not so talented or successful with her chewed fingernails. Trying, though, to justify her Equity card, taking whatever part she could get.

      ‘Did you ever hear of the Karnival Club?’ he asked Stella.

      Stella looked surprised. ‘Yes, I know about it. Why do you ask?’

      ‘Marianna Manners had an engagement there. She was at the Karnival a week. It was where she met Job Titus.’

      ‘I went there once,’ said Stella.

      ‘You did?’

      ‘I was producing a play about a transvestite. I wanted to get it right.’

      ‘Did it help?’

      ‘So-so. The production was scrapped anyway.’

      He wouldn’t question her now, but tomorrow, in the morning, he would get out of her the date and details of her visit.

      But he couldn’t resist one question. ‘What did you wear?’ She considered. ‘Well, it was work. I didn’t dress up.’ Hastily she added, ‘Not that way, or any way. It was summer. Jeans and a shirt, I think.’

      One more question had to be asked now after all. ‘Which summer?’

      ‘This summer. When it was hot, in June.’

      This summer, not so long ago. Not too long ago for a person to have seen both Marianna and Stella.

      Damn, he thought. Damn and damn and damn.

CHAPTER 5

       Thursday. Down Napier Street

      Morning did not always bring joy. Annie woke up with a headache and a gut feeling of worry. ‘Always worse in the morning,’ she told herself. She battled against misery, always had, she was a fighter.

      Annie cleared away the breakfast and took her daughter to nursery school. Didi was still asleep, she seemed to use more than the average ration of oblivion. Annie couldn’t remember if she had been that way herself but she thought not. Sleep, surely, had been a commodity hard to come by after that episode in the garden. Moreover, there had been a generation change and it had happened between Annie and Didi, a matter of some ten years. Girls were different now.

      Her thoughts veered away to Caroline Royal. Caroline, the tenant upstairs, was someone she thought about often. As soon as Caroline had rented the flat, Annie had known she was going to be important in her life. There was something different about Caroline.

      Caroline’s flat at the top of Annie’s house was always beautifully in order but with an empty feeling to it, as if Caroline left nothing behind when she went out to work. It was hardly her home because she travelled so much. Perhaps Heathrow was where she really lived.

      Annie went up the outside staircase next day, the day after her conversation with Tom Ashworth. Didi was out doing whatever Didi did every day. She said she was working at Max’s Delicatessen near St Luke’s Theatre and much frequented by those acting at the theatre and their hopeful hangers-on who thought there might be an agent or a company scout drinking coffee and nibbling Max’s special almond brioches, but Annie doubted if she was there all the time.

      Annie had a key which she used so that she could see if any post was accumulating for Caroline. She had an address to which to send it and if she felt like it, she did so send it. Occasionally, if the place looked dusty she would give a quick flick round with a duster but she didn’t bother much. Caroline would not notice. One of the things that Annie had observed about Caroline was her relative in-difference to the appearance of where she lived and the freedom this gave her. Annie saluted her for all her freedoms.

      There was no post.

      Annie looked around. The flat felt empty but no one knew better than Annie that appearances were deceptive. She stood on the threshold and let the silence of the flat sink into her.

      ‘Caroline, Caroline,’ she murmured, half aloud. ‘Keep Charley tethered today. Don’t let him out.’

      Is Charley a dog, Annie said sadly to herself, as she locked the door behind her and went down the stairs, that I must talk about him so?

      Annie went back to her sitting-room where she settled herself at the table with her books to do her essay of the week on the Treaty of Vienna. She was a slow worker, but thorough.

      Didi came back at lunch-time. She was late and tired. ‘Had a rush,’ she complained. ‘I had to help at the counter as well as the tables and my feet ache.’ She kicked off her shoes. ‘Can I get you something?’

      ‘Some coffee if you’re making it,’ said Annie, her head still bent over her notes.

      ‘Can do.’ Didi padded off to the kitchen. The sisters were fond of each other and happy in each other’s company most of the time.

      ‘Why didn’t you stay to eat at Max’s?’ Annie called after her.